Afternic

Every once in a while, I check out the landing pages for various high value domain names owned by GoDaddy via its NameFind portfolio company. Because GoDaddy has one of the largest domain name portfolios and probably sells more aftermarket domain names than anyone else, I visit their landing pages to see if I can learn anything valuable to help me sell my domain names.

In June of last year, I noticed quite a few of their valuable one word .com domain names had a different domain for sale landing page. The company appeared to take many of them off of a parking PPC landing page and used a different style of landing page to make it clear that the domain name was for sale.

This morning, I noticed the landing page for some of the premium names changed again. The company is no longer using the landing page that had been used before, but is now forward the domain names to what I believe is the longstanding Afternic inquiry form:

Earlier this month, Jamie Zoch reported that “Signet.com has been acquired by a currently unknown CSC Corporate Domains client.” The domain name was sold by Netincome Ventures, Garry Chernoff’s domain investment firm. From what I can see using DomainTools Whois History tool, Garry’s company owned Signet.com since at least 2004, the date of the earliest historical Whois record.

I have been given permission to share that Signet.com was sold for $300,000 in a deal brokered by Afternic. Garry told me the deal took three months to negotiate. The sale was confirmed by a representative from Afternic, but the company declined to provide further details about the deal.

I have a few hundred domain names listed for sale on Afternic / GoDaddy. After re-listing a domain name for sale, I discovered something that is pretty small but could pose a larger concern. Domain names listed for sale on Afternic have a listing date on the listing page:

For most people, this is probably a very small detail that would go unnoticed. I didn’t really even think about it until very recently, and I want to share why it could be problematic.

I was reading the news and I learned that a big company had acquired a smaller company, and I own the exact match .com domain name of the smaller brand name, which is completely generic/descriptive. In this particular field, the smaller companies retain their own branding, so there is not a concern that the brand name would change.

Steve Jurvetson is a well-known venture capitalist and was a co-founder of the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). Apparently, Jurvetson left DFJ last year, and Recode is reporting that he is starting a new firm called Future Ventures. Interestingly, the company is using the new gTLD domain name, Future.Ventures for its website.

The Future Ventures brand name sounded familiar to me because the exact match .com domain name, FutureVentures.com, was sold on NameJet about 2.5 months ago. I liked the name enough to bid $777 for it, but FutureVentures.com ended up selling for $1,009. There were 37 bidders who participated in the expiry auction.

When I did a Whois search for the domain name, the Registrar Status is listed

Earlier this week, I received an offer for a domain name that had its BIN price listed on its landing page. I proceeded to negotiate with the prospect, and I told him he need to come up to a certain number to get a deal done. A couple of hours passed, and I received an email from Afternic telling me the domain name sold for the BIN price, which was lower than the BIN price on my landing page but in line with what I had emailed to the prospect.

I don’t typically have two different buy it now prices for my domain names. I think it is more fair for buyers if my prices are consistent across platforms, and I think it bring up questions if that isn’t the case. It is a case of fairness because a person would be (rightfully) upset if they paid $10,000 to buy a name via Afternic but found out that same name had an active BIN listing on Sedo at $7,000 after they already paid.

Afternic emailed its customers yesterday to let them know they could now more easily set up landing pages without pay per click (PPC) links on them. These types of “for sale” landing pages make it more obvious that a particular domain name is for sale rather than having a smaller “for sale” notice on them. These landing pages give visitors the option to call a toll free number to speak with an Afternic sales representative, or they can fill out an inquiry form. The asking price is not listed on the landing page.

An example of the landing page Afternic customers can implement on their domain names can be seen below:

Prior to yesterday’s news, customer were able to forward their domain names to this type of landing page, but it took more effort setting up forwarding for each domain name. This nameserver change option will allow users to set this up in bulk.

Commenting on this change, Afternic’s Alan Shiflett shared the following information with me:

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